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EQnext: Dynamic Starting Areas.
GrayKodiak
Member CommonPosts: 576
Massively's Tattered Notebook did an article on EQnext today with this information that flew under my radar from Franchise Director Dave Georgeson,
...for EQ Next, new players will be dropped in the area of the current Rallying Call. This is so new players can become a part of the action immediately, as well well as be among other players. Imagine if the game's first Rallying Call were to build Qeynos, but after a year we had moved along to Halas and Qeynos was populated by very angry dragons. Talk about the ultimate newbie trap! Dropping a new player there would not be very beneficial to retention.
This could be interesting, it also could mean that, at least at the start, we can assume faction PvP isn't built into the system if everyone is starting out and working at the same goal coming out the character creation gate. I suppose it is possible you join factions later on like certain other newer titles....but I am not holding my breath.
More than a lot of information released though it does point to a truly changing world if it is dynamic to the point that starting areas can not be depended upon to remain there from year to year, I would like to know what areas are truly permanent then, I assume the game will have some major untouchable (by players) city or cities. I suppose it also means we can assume rally points will be protected from major player grief causing activity if that is where joe and jane newbie are rolling out.
Interesting mechanic that will be fun to see if it makes it to launch. I suppose if it does you really will have a different play through if you make a new character since you may start out on the other side of the world in a city or event that didn't exist the first time you made a character.
Comments
i haven't heard them mention simultaneous rally calls in the game world, if that turns out to be the case, it sounds like a single starting area. i agree with you, i would much prefer multiple starting areas. my personal preference is to start out in an out of the way village or camp and gather my bearings before being thrown into a full scale war.
Well, the rally call would be an out of the way village or camp...until it is complete anyway at which point it would, I suppose be a built city or empty camp...and then the starting area would move somewhere else that is once again an out of the way area.
But I get what your saying...I actually hope if there is a newbie experience then it is done in a training area away from the rally point or they will all be full of level 2's running back and forth during the tutorial session that is apparently mandatory (something like Dark Fall Unholy Wars which has the starting area zoned...I do not generally like zones but this is probably a good use for them)
For different technical limitation they can't start with just one starting area.. just imagine and Launch day all 3000+ players(or whatever amount can play at one server) spawning at that one spot.. server would instantly crash or freeze, and everyone would just have a sideshow.
Yea I was wondering about that as well, I suppose there could be "camps" around the area (and honestly the instance tutorial still sounds like a must with so many in clsoe proximity) but maybe it is a side effect of the lack of horizontal progression that they can assume people will spread out equally from that point in all directions....still.....
It really would depend on things we don't know about like the overall size of any given space, and even the ability of the engine to display multiple characters at once...things we have no idea about because we have not seen any complete area or multiple characters at once.
Sherman's Gaming
Youtube Content creator for The Elder Scrolls Online
Channel:http://https//www.youtube.com/channel/UCrgYNgpFTRAl4XWz31o2emw
Lady Bugs,
"Ahh you have arrived we must set up a town, in order to do so we need to clear out the ladybugs...20 of them"
which of course would turn into
"Back in my day we had to kill ladybugs on the beach none of this lady bug killing in a nice wooded area"
Well i am not so sure i like this idea.As long as it is not a simple drop into a nothing wilderness,i might be ok with it.Point is we should always start in a city,after all we are suppose to be living there,buy our wares ect ect.
I don't like being dropped in the middle of nowhere,it is not suppose to be about instant action,this is not the ARCADE genre,we are playing a ROLE playing game.
Rather than the simple approach all games use,i would like to see more realistic reasoning for just being in the game.Perhaps we need to start by serving the king of that realm,with a series of quests or operations.We need to farm to eat and build our house and gain money to buy items to craft with ect ect.We should be living out a role playing game,that is what the genre is.
They could EASILY have us start in a safe zone,you don't have to spawn right in the middle of dragons,that would look dumb anyhow.
This sort of scares me to think there might not be much assets to start,they have designed a system similar to GW2 that allows the developer to get away half finished and just tell us it is dynamic and has not yet been built or triggered.We simply need to BEtA the REAL game,too much talk by SOE,you really can't trust a lot of it,i like to see concrete visuals to show exactly what is happening.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.